“The 10th Annual Boomtown Film and Music Festival, or #BoomFestX, kicked off on Thursday, February 23rd, 2017. If you weren’t there, you don’t know what you missed, so let me teach you a thing or seven. When I finish, you’ll either put a giant “11th Annual BoomFest” on your calendar for February 2018, or I’ll stop liking you. Your call.”

The yearly exodus of creative talent is a psychological drain on those of us who remain. It’s a bitter pill I’m happy to swallow if it means the creative, financial, and mental success of my fellow artists. But it doesn’t make me like being Left Behind in Beaumont any more.

Always seek yourself. I’ve internalized that mantra since high school. When life felt full of questions, I wrote them down. Sometimes I found answers, sometimes I found more questions. More importantly, over time, I found myself.

Millennials are constantly derided for our “me” focus, but looking inward makes us grow. We’re a generation that asks, “Why?”

Older generations hate that question – we see it lampooned frequently in family sitcoms. A beleaguered adult wit-wrestles with a child who repeatedly asks, “Why?”